Welcome Back, I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas Break. I can't wait to hear all about it!

This half term, we have lots of lovely fun things planned.

In our literacy lessons in Maple class, we will be reading a book called, 'Hello Lighthouse', written by Sophie Blackall. This is a beautifully illustrated text with a heart-warming storyline. We will be using this text to write a newspaper report, a letter and a diary.

In art this half term we will be exploring patterns. Using colours, paints and other media, we will be creating tessellating patterns. We will be studying a few artists to inspire us including Andy Gilmore and Shaheen Ahmed. 

In History, the year 3s and the year 5s will be studying Ancient Egypt. We will be learning about where the Egyptians lived, what they are famous for, what we have learned from them and about their lives. We will be finding out about Tutankhamun as well as many Egyptian gods. Year 4s will be learning about the Shang Dynasty of Ancient China. When did the Shang dynasty exist and what was life like? We will be finding out about dragon bones and other artefacts. We will also be learning about Fu Hao and what is so special about her tomb.

In computing lessons, Year 3 will be using branching databases to sort information. Year 4s will be using data loggers and explaining how data is collected. 

In our RE learning, we will be exploring what symbols and stories help Jewish people to remember their covenant with God. 

Spellings will continue as normal this half term with children being given the list the need for their year group.  We encourage children to practice these lists of words every day for a few minutes to become more familiar with them. Within our spelling lessons, children are shown how these patterns can be applied to many different words and then they have time to write their spellings in sentences. 

We will be sending out more information about our residential trips this half term ready for after the half term break. 

A reminder about communication: Please do email the office if you have to let the school know about an absence, a holiday or a change to who is collecting your child from school that day. Any other school related queries can go through the office too. However, should you need to speak to your child's teacher regarding an emotional wellbeing question, or you have a question about an incident in school, please do email the class teacher via their personal email and they will read and respond after school hours on their working days during term time. Dojo will be used by the teachers to communicate stories about the learning happening in the classroom as well as providing weekly learning links to the website.